The Top Issue at CPAC
… and the margin by which it surpassed other issues surprised me. From ABC’s The Note:
CPAC’s straw poll got underway on Thursday at the Omni Shoreham Hotel in Washington, D.C., and was conducted through Friday afternoon.
As conference attendees would walk into the hotel’s main ballroom, they were invited to fill out a questionnaire.
* * *
The conservative activists participating in CPAC’s straw poll are primarily concerned with limiting the scope of government. Seventy-four percent of straw poll participants said they are most concerned about limiting the size of government, 15 percent said they are primarily concerned with promoting traditional values and 10 percent said they are primarily concerned with security regardless of the cost.
I’d have thought social issues/”traditional values” would have gotten top billing.
As for the winner of the CPAC presidential straw poll, frankly, I wish he were president now. It’s a good guess that Mitt Romney would not be contemplating, for example, the nationalization of our banks or the dismantling of contract law and the slide in real estate values that will certainly follow – just the opposite of the effect sought – because banks will both constrict lending and charge more to lend. Ah, the road to hell …
Check out Fox News for extensive coverage of CPAC, which wraps up today.
Would have been nice if these “conservatives” had shown some concern about the government supremacism of GWB.
Like torture, world domination, balloning military and national security spending, foreign aid, propping up the Israeli apartheid state, police state Patriot Act provisions, corporate and Wall Street bailouts, etc., etc., etc.
Really, other than slightly higher taxes on millionaires this administration is little more than Bush’s third term.
Mike:
You’re blinded by hatred. Bush’s Third Term? Only if you remove all measures of degree and erase several significant distinctions.
Re: the provisions for judges to in effect rewrite mortgages, the likely effect is to dry up the private mortgage market.
First, lenders are going to be reluctant to continue in that market if they cannot count on the rule of law / contracts.
Second, if they do, they’ll bump up interest rates to offset the greater risk of loss (analogous to higher interest rates on credit cards).
In either case, homebuyers will be driven to the government sponsored / subsidized Fannie and Freddie, which will be able of offer below market rates.
This will further drive remaining private lenders out of the business.
So we end up with the quasi-government (and politicized) Fannie and Freddie as the only, or nearly the only, source of mortgages.
Thus the housing market will be federalized.
Don’t for a minute assume that this is not Obama’s end game.
After all, this is the same game plan that many have posited is the way that they’ll stealthily accomplish socialized medicine, by creating government subsidized entity and regulatory scheme that will drive the private health insurers out of the business, forcing everyone into the only game left in town.
Mike,
You’re absolutely correct. GWB and the neo-cons are guilty as you (and many others) have charged.
“The argument that the two parties should represent opposed ideals and policies, one, perhaps, of the Right and the other of the Left, is a foolish idea acceptable only to the doctrinaire and academic thinkers. Instead, the two parties should be almost identical, so that the American people can “throw the rascals out” at any election without leading to any profound or extreme shifts in policy.” – Carol Quigley
There is much to lament about the last eight years, and GWB and the Republicans certainly set the stage for what we’re about to experience, but to reduce what Obama’s planning to a “Bush third term” is to brush away magnitude.
I didn’t say Obama is “Bush’s Third Term” but rather “Bush’s Third Term with increased taxes on millionaires.”
Open Borders-check
Increasing Police State-check
Obscene government spending and deficits-check
Hitlerian thirst for global dominance-check
Endless land war in Asia-check
“War” on drugs-check
Bottomless pit of trillions on corporate bailouts, Wall Street bailouts, etc.-check.
Trillions poured into the madness of the military-industrial and national-security industrial complexes-check
Earmarks-check
Am I missing something Justin?